CA Governor Candidate Steve Hilton on Why California is Destroying Itself & How a Republican Can Win

**Jason** (0:00)
All right, everybody, welcome back to the All-In Interview Show. We're very lucky today to have a candidate for the Governor of California, who is extremely unique in a number of ways. First of all, he's a Republican. And second, he's a Brit.
Welcome to the program, Steve Hilton. You've decided to increase the degree of difficulty in two ways, but you're polling fantastic. You've got five or six people in the polls.

**Chamath** (0:28)
He's leading the field.

**Jason** (0:29)
You're leading the field. Obviously, it's going to get narrowed a bit when the Democrats shiv a couple more people and get them out of the race and then pick their eventual winner in their cobble. Whenever that happens, when Nancy Pelosi picks who's running. But Steve, maybe you could start by telling.
Sorry, guys, I got jokes. But Steve, maybe you could introduce yourself a bit and tell us why you're running.

**Steve Hilton** (0:53)
Well, hang on, can I just say, just after that great intro where you just tried to kill my chances in just a couple of words, thanks a lot, Jason. Really appreciate it.

**Chamath** (1:01)
Let me add you to this. I've known Steve since 2012, 2013, when he and his wife, Rachel Whatstone, moved to Silicon Valley. Rachel worked at Facebook initially, and then she worked with you, Jason, at Uber and then has had a great run. And then Steve, similarly. And you said it in a funny way, but ultimately, this is an incredible land of immigrants. And Steve has a really compelling story. So before we jump into the questions, I know your background, Steve, but I do think it's important.
Go back to your parents, your mom, how you grew up, and just set the stage for how you made it out from the way you started, because I think that's important. And then how you got to the United States and why.

**Steve Hilton** (1:44)
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. And you're right, we've known each other a long time now, and it's a great joy to be here. By the way, I just want to say, it's a great joy to be on a show where I don't have to wear the suit and shirt, and you know, that's one of the things about running for governor, that I'm loving most of it, but dressing up is not the favorite part for me. So it's great to be with you. I thought for this show, you know, we got to get it right. I think that the more I think about my background, the more I think it is really important in terms of how I see things and what I want to get done. My parents are Hungarian.
They were refugees from Communism. And I grew up in England in a town called Brighton on the South Coast. And you know, we just had a regular working class immigrant aspirational family story, I guess. You know, it was my parents actually split up when I was young. My stepfather is also Hungarian. He had an amazing story. He was a refugee as well, but literally ran across the border. He grew up in a small village on the west side of Hungary. In 1956, when he had the Soviet invasion. And he tells this amazing story they heard on the radio. The Russians are coming. And he and his brother and some friends from his school, he was 14 years old, like one year younger than my youngest son right now.
And they just ran. They literally ran for this right. We want our freedom. They ran to the border, barbed wire fences, minefields, got shot out by the guards, all that. Half of them were killed. And he ended up in a refugee camp in Austria and from then to England.
So all of that, I guess, just gives you that sense of real appreciation for actual freedom, for freedom and opportunity. And I grew up in England, worked very hard, ended up at Oxford University. But my first job was project manager for a construction company. I just wanted to earn money. I just wanted to get out. I think that's exactly the right phrase that you used. And that's been the story. After Oxford, I went to work for a little bit in the Conservative Party in England. Then I worked for a big ad agency, worked all around the world, started my own business. A couple of offshoots of that, including a couple of restaurants. Then went back into politics when my friend, David Cameron, who I'd met many years before, had gone into politics, got elected to parliament. I helped run his campaign for the leadership of the British Conservative Party, won that election. And then worked with him to get the Conservatives elected when he became Prime Minister in 2010, joined him in 10 Downing Street. I was Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister. Most of my job was really focused on trying to implement our reform program. And then in 2012, that's when we met, we moved here because Rachel, actually before Facebook, she was at Google.